


Graveside

by BarPurple



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 12:49:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9182482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarPurple/pseuds/BarPurple
Summary: Rumple finds a grave in Storybrooke that surprises him.





	

Rumple had wandered to the cemetery after the docks. The small joy he felt at hearing Belle listening to the tape he’d made had faded and the shop was too restrictive at the moment. 

A stone he’d never noticed caught his eye and drew him from the path that led to Bae’s grave. It was an odd place for a grave, so far from the others, tucked in a little used corner that he wouldn’t have noticed had he not taken the long way round. A cold laugh erupted from his chest as he read the name carved into the rough stone.

RUMPLESTILTSKIN

When had this been put up? After he’d killed Pan? After he was banished? He crouched down and ran his fingers over the letters of his own name. There was no tingle of lingering magic under his fingertips, so this had been carved the old fashioned way, but on whose instruction? Belle was the only person who would have marked his passing is such a way, at least she had been, but she’d never mentioned it, and surely things hadn’t been so bad between them that she would want to leave this up once he returned?

He sat back on his heels and ran his hand over his face. It was a bizarre situation to be looking at his own grave even though he’d never been interred here. For a strange moment he fancied that the man he had been lay in the cold ground, probably wrapped in a cheap shroud, or a rough pine box. The question was which man? The hopeful spinner excited to be drafted for a never ending war? No, that man had been buried on the frontlines by the blow of a sledgehammer. The crippled coward trying to make his sham of a marriage work? No, that one was buried under an ale stained tavern floor. The desperate father? Nope, he went when a dagger plunged into a demon’s chest. The Dark One? Not likely, that one had died twice and hadn’t let it slow him down. Mister Gold? Now that was fitting; a fake man in a fake grave.

A twittering laugh disturbed the birds in the nearby trees. Rumplestiltskin rose to his feet and waved a hand at the offending slab of rock. The cloud of ruddy smoke hadn’t cleared before he turned on his heel and strolled from the cemetery. The smoke evaporated revealing a toppled gravestone, cracked almost in two through the single carved name. Few in Storybrooke understood the significance, but those that had returned from the Underworld shivered when they heard.


End file.
